Only Human: Rose and the Doctor
by Buttery-Candles
Summary: A series of vignettes portraying the life that Rose and the Doctor lived in Pete's World. Written as close to canon as possible; this is my genuine prediction of the things that happened after the end of Journey's End.
1. Chapter 1

_Only Just After_

The last echo faded away. There was nothing to say.

"I say," said Jackie Tyler, "I know he's the Doctor and he's got reasons for things, but did he have to put us in bloody Norway again?"

Rose stared at the Doctor. He stared at her.

"What now?" she said.

The Doctor had to stop himself looking at the spot where it had been a few moments before. It had never dematerialized without him before. It left a new kind of loneliness.

"Whatever you like, I suppose," he said.

_Several Hours After_

"Well, this is it," said Rose, as they stepped off the train. "We're home."

"Home," repeated the Doctor. "Not too different from the old London, is it? Say, have you still got that dog —"

He stopped when he saw the way she was staring off into the distance. Her mascara was still smudged on her cheeks. There was a faraway look in her eyes. She looked tired. That was the word. Tired.

"Do you know what I think," he said, swallowing.

"What?"

"I think I want chips. Do you want chips?"

"I don't know what I want, Doctor." She spared him a quick glance, then went off down the platform without him. He watched her go the same way he had watched the TARDIS go. A new kind of loneliness. He tucked his hands in his pockets and followed with a sigh.

_One Evening After_

"Ah, so _this _is Tony!" The Doctor bent over the little bespectacled boy who had come to greet them in the foyer. "I say, _that _is a nice tie. You'll have to take me to the place where you get your ties."

"Are you the Doctor?" asked Tony.

"Yes, yes I am." The Doctor's gaze slid over to where Rose stood in the corner. "I am indeed the Doctor. And you are indeed Tony."

"I already said that," said Tony.

"Yes you did."

_Three Days After_

Pete came into the kitchen midmorning to find the Doctor sitting at the table, staring into the distance.

"Can I get you a cup of tea or something, Doctor?" he said.

The Doctor didn't reply right away. After a moment, without turning his head, he said, "I'm not sure what I've done to myself. Nine hundred years of cosmic life, and this is how it ends. With domestic."

"Jackie told me how something went funny and there ended up two of you," said Pete.

"Isn't that just like Jackie. _Something went funny_. They're all gone, Pete. They're all gone and I'll never see them again. Donna, my TARDIS, not even Jack. I just stepped into this world without a second thought and now they're gone forever."

Pete sat down across from him.

"Think you made a mistake, do you?"

"Didn't have much choice. This was the best thing. I think Rose thinks she might have made one, though. Then again, she didn't have much choice either." He drew in a sigh again. "If she won't have me here I'll have to find someplace to stay. I can grow a new TARDIS, in a couple of years. It won't be the same, but… only one life to live, how bad could it be?"

Pete watched him carefully. "You know what I think, Doctor?"

"No, what?"

"I think you need to stop pretending to be all right to keep other people happy. They can see right through it. Rose used to tell me all the time how lonely you were. She worried you would do something stupid, without her. And looking at you now I think she might have been right." He leaned across the table. "Sometimes we need to feel sorry for ourselves, and sometimes we need to do it with somebody else. You're only human, Doctor."

The Doctor stared at him. Finally he gave a little laugh and raised his eyes to the ceiling.

"Oh, you don't know what you just said, Pete Tyler. How right you are. _Only human_… how right you are."

They hadn't seen Rose standing in the doorway, listening to them, and they didn't notice when she moved away.


	2. Chapter 2

_Four Evenings After_

He was thinking of leaving, that evening alone by the fireplace. And she must have realized it because her voice suddenly cracked the silence.

"Are you really him? I mean, are you really the _same _him?"

The Doctor turned, startled, and saw her standing in the doorway.

"Oh yes," he said. "New body, maybe. Bit more human. But same me."

"You seem different." Rose came carefully around the sofa and sat down beside him. "You've got the same face, but you're different somehow, I just can't put my finger on it."

"Good different, or bad different?"

"No, don't do that. It's not like last time. Last time you just sort of… replaced yourself. But now there're two of you. I don't know which is the real one. I thought I got it, in Bad Wolf Bay. But now I don't know. I mean… there can only be one Doctor."

"That's right," he said. "And we're both him."

"How's that possible?"

"Rose Tyler," he said, smiling. "All that we've been through and that's what gets you. I suppose I am different, aren't I? Well, I did regenerate didn't I, can't be expected to be all the same. The hand wasn't enough to finish all of me. Genetic copy, gaps filled in, that's why I only have one heart."

"You're taller."

"Regeneration's a dodgy business. A metacrisis, _well_, that'd be even more so."

She was staring at him. Her head was tilted to one side in that way of hers.

"You're… still you."

"I am _very _me."

She still had a look of befuddlement in her eyes. He thought he had better elaborate.

"It's the energy, the regeneration energy. I'm in the regeneration energy. That's what I _am_. That's what holds that little bit of self that gets carried along from regeneration to regeneration. Even if I lost my memories I'd still have that little bit of me that's _me_. Does that make sense?"

"Sort of, yeah." She gave him a small smile, watching his face. It was the same face, but different, too, like she'd said. It was a little more intense, a little more confused. It looked… it looked a little more _human_. Rose laughed quietly. "Yeah, I suppose it does."

She rested her cheek on his shoulder, and they sat there watching the fire pop and crackle in a universe neither of them really belonged in. Rose didn't see the smile that spread across the Doctor's face, the smile of an old man on young lips.


	3. Chapter 3

_One Week After_

Sleep had been one of the unexpected things. Noon on Monday, Rose opened the door to his room and found the Doctor and half the duvet sprawled across the floor.

"Doctor, get up! You need to eat something."

The Doctor mumbled something.

"Doctor, come on, you've been like that for twelve hours."

"Sorry, _how _long?" He twisted to look at her through half-closed eyes. "No, no, I don't sleep for twelve hours. I only need one, I'm a Time Lord…" His hair, which had grown abnormally long in just a week, managed to point in every compass direction at once. There was even a beard coming in. "I don't… Rose?"

She backed out of his room, shaking with muffled laughter that carried all the way back down the stairs.


	4. Chapter 4

_Three Weeks After_

It started innocently, when she saw that he was growing the TARDIS coral in his bedroom. He had managed to manufacture a makeshift sonic screwdriver from bits Rose and Pete had brought him back from Torchwood. It helped immensely with the process.

"What are you going to do when that's finished?" she asked, pointing to the coral.

"Oh, I dunno, traveling. What I've always done."

"You're… you're just going to leave again."

He caught the edge in her voice and looked round. "Not without you," he said. "Never without you, Rose. Never again."

"Have you ever thought… have you ever thought that maybe enough is enough?"

"I thought you'd be excited."

"Every place we go, something bad happens. And you always just… keep going. Sometimes it seemed like you were running. And I went with you. Because… because you're the Doctor, and that meant you knew what you were doing. But maybe you were just running. Is that what you're doing now, Doctor? Are you running away from all this? Is domestic life that terrifying to you?"

"Terrifying?" The Doctor stood up slowly. The hand holding the new sonic was numb. "Is that what you think I am, terrified? Rose, do you think this is _easy_? D'you think it's _easy _being human all of a sudden, being thrust into this when all my life I've been wandering, all my life I've been alone?"

"But you're human now," she said. "You said so yourself. You said you've only got one life. That you want to spend it with me."

"My body might be human," said the Doctor, "but my brain's not. I'm still a Time Lord inside, Rose, and that's all I've got left, don't you see? I've been separated from everything else, from my TARDIS, from all the planets I explored, all the things I did. Even from my own body. I've lost everything."

There was a deathly silence.

"You've still got me," said Rose.

"I'm lost," said the Doctor. He dropped the sonic onto his bedside table. It was difficult, very difficult, to keep from shaking, to keep his anger inside. Was it the new human chemicals in his body? "It used to be that wherever I went I could still be a little bit at home, I could still save people. I had my TARDIS, I was the Last of the Time Lords. Now I'm not even that. Even my body is alien."

"You spend so long defending us," said Rose. "After all that, you still consider us aliens? Am _I _an alien, Doctor?"

"Yes." He breathed it to himself. "Yes, you are. And so am I. I'm an alien to myself."

"If you'd rather go, then," she said, and stood aside.

The Doctor looked at the duvet, the well-used bed, the wardrobe. Sometimes he still felt unsteady on his feet. The single heartbeat where there should have been two was constantly throwing him off-balance. And the little piece of TARDIS coral in the windowsill, with bits of wire and metal strewn about it.

"Fine, then," he said, and swept past her. It was such an impulsive, human thing to do, but before he knew it he was out of the house and striding with purpose down the street.

As soon as Rose heard the front door slam, something cracked inside her, and she sat down on the bed and burst into tears. _That's what you do, isn't it? Just leave us behind. That what you're going to do to me, Doctor? _

_No. Not to you. _

It took the Doctor several hours of walking between streets, through back alleys and restaurant car parks, before he realized he was searching for a blue wooden box, and several hours more before he realized he wasn't going to find it.


	5. Chapter 5

_Three Weeks And One Day After_

The floorboards in the hallway creaked at one o'clock in the morning and her traitorous heart leaped at the sound. The door opened. A familiar smell wafted in.

Rose turned to look at him, bewildered.

"Are those chips?"

"Yeah."

"You brought back _chips_?"

"If you don't want them, I'll leave. I understand."

"Where the hell did you find chips at one in the morning?"

The Doctor paused at the doorway. "Went for a stroll."

She smiled. A real smile, teeth glowing the dark.

"Blimey, you really have gone native, haven't you?"  
He looked at her for a long moment, his mouth drawn in a tight line. She looked at the floor. "Sorry."

He said nothing.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come back," said Rose.

"Rose Tyler, where on earth could I possibly go?"

"Exactly."

The Doctor blinked. Then he put the chips on the bed and sat down beside Rose. Humans were difficult. They always had been, but he hadn't counted on it getting even harder when he was partly one of them.

"Donna's gone," he said.

"How d'you mean?"

"The Metacrisis will have overloaded her brain. I — the other I — he'll have had to wipe her mind. Take away every memory she's ever had of me. I'm only glad I didn't have to do that, even if it meant giving up the TARDIS."

"You… he… you… just wiped it clean? Just like that?"

"Would have had to," said the Doctor grimly. "She'd burn up otherwise."

"Oh my god," said Rose.

"Another one left behind, I suppose."

There was a long silence, which was at length broken by the crinkling of a paper bag and something salty held under his nose.

"Chip?"

He let out some kind of pathetic little giggle and took it with his mouth. For a while after that the only sound was the rustle of the bag, and quiet chewing in the dark. It took a minute of searching, but he found her fingers beside him, and they held hands while they ate, until the chips were all gone.

"You going to stay?" asked Rose.

"If you want."

"Stay."

He had to smile. "I've got to, don't I? I've lost a heart. I'm used to having two. Don't know if I can survive with just one."

"Where'd you pick that one up?" Rose gave him a little shove. "Alright, I'll go along. You can have mine if you need it."

"Brilliant."


	6. Chapter 6

_Three Months After_

Fortunately, this was one of those nights that they slept in the same room together, which they did more and more often now, blaming insomnia or homesickness or (in the Doctor's case) loud and often uncited noises in the bedroom upstairs that simply could not be dealt with. It was about midnight when the dreams sucked themselves from the Doctor's mind and he sat up with a cry, panting and staring desperately into the dark.

Rose jolted awake beside him.

"What is it, what's wrong?"  
The Doctor did not immediately reply. He scanned the darkest corners of the bedroom, and in the deepest shadows could almost catch silhouettes of the control room, the arches of TARDIS coral, the lights on the walls. They were burning. And deep in his brain — no, not in his brain, in some other, core part of himself — he could hear the faintest snatches of a song, deep and mournful, and near its end.

"The song is ending," he breathed.

"What?"

For an instant, a flare of bright light blazed up in front of his eyes, and then it was gone; the song, the images, the strange pain in his veins all faded away and he was alone again. He was even more alone than before — a presence in his mind, one he hadn't even been aware of until now, flared and faded completely from existence.

"I've regenerated," said the Doctor.

"What? How? How do you know?"

"I just do. Must be some sort of… psychic link, across worlds. And it just broke."

"What happened? Why did he regenerate?"

"I don't know. We'll never know. This body is a copy of that regeneration of myself, so I must have been linked to it but now all his cells will have replaced themselves… it's gone. Our last link to that universe. It's gone forever."

Rose was silent for a long time after he said that. She was thinking about the other Doctor, the one who had left them on the beach, the one who had taken the TARDIS, the one who already had two hearts. He really had been a sort of god, she realized. She'd never thought of him like that before, but there it was.

What about the one beside her, what was he? Was he different, for being more human?

A snore jerked her from her reverie. The Doctor had slumped back onto his pillow in the interval. A thin trickle of saliva trailed from his mouth.

_Different enough_, she thought, with a smile.


	7. Chapter 7

_Two Years After_

She was so deeply entrenched in the corridors of sleep that at first she didn't hear him scream her name, but after the third or fourth time she jerked awake. She was alone in the room, and through the curtains she could discern that it was the absolute blackness of the small hours of the morning.

From outside, the voice came again.

"_Rose_!"

He never screamed for no reason. Rose threw off the covers and stumbled from the room barefoot, lurching into the hallway and colliding with the bannister before she was able to get her balance. The cold floor burned against the soles of her feet as she pounded down the stairs into the foyer. As she reached the bottom, the front doors flew open and revealed the Doctor on the front porch. He was bug-eyed and looked quite manic, clad in pajamas and a bathrobe, his new sonic screwdriver glowing in his right hand.

"Rose, Rose, it's _done_!" Before Rose could say a word he lunged through the doorway and swept her up, spinning her round in the air and laughing like she hadn't heard him laugh in years. "In just two _years_, I didn't think it was possible!"

"Quiet, you'll wake Tony!" She struggled away from him, laughing breathlessly. "What's done, what are you talking about?"

He grabbed her hand and dragged her into the cold night air outside.

"Come on!"

He led her down the porch steps and round the side of the house, through the gate and over the stepping stone path that led into the backyard garden. The silence outside was eerily calming, and by the time they stepped through the garden gate they had both stopped laughing. Somewhere far overhead a zeppelin hummed mechanically along.

Rose ground her heels in the wet grass, trying to ignore the numbing cold, and turned to ask the Doctor what on earth he wanted her to see, but the question went forever unsaid because at that moment she saw it herself. A huge, twisting structure had grown up, towering over the rosebushes, made of something that looked organic and mechanical at the same time, something that was clearly alien.

At the sight of it the Doctor started laughing again, gleefully.

"What — what is it?" said Rose, confused.

"Don't be daft, Rose, it's the TARDIS!" He turned to look at her, grinning. "It's my TARDIS! No — no, it's _our_ TARDIS!"

"That — that's the TARDIS?" She pointed at the thing. "That."

"Well, you didn't think the Gallifreyan Time Lords all went around in blue police boxes, did you? Come on, let's look inside!" He seized her hand again and this time he didn't have to haul her along, she went with him and they leapt right over the rosebushes, all in bathrobes and bare feet and flannel pajamas. Looking at it, she never would have been able to even find the door, but the Doctor seemed to know exactly what he was doing, because he pressed a place on the structure and a gap opened up with a _hiss_.

In they stepped.

"Blimey," whispered Rose.

"Oh yes, _oh yes_, you are _beautiful_!" The Doctor bounded up the steps to the control center, which looked the same as the control center from the other TARDIS, but different, too, in a way Rose couldn't quite put her finger on. Everything hummed and whirred and shone with a life and vigour that she had never seen. Everything was clean; nothing was rusty.

"Everything in place, everything as it should be, _you little beauty_." The Doctor seemed to have quite forgotten about Rose in his excitement as he darted to and fro across the control room. Smiling, Rose leaned against the door frame and watched him with amusement. "I was afraid shatterfrying the plasmic shell would stunt your growth but you are just as gorgeous… no, no, _more _gorgeous than my last one. And is that a _dimension loop_? Hello, hello, yes, you gorgeous thing, I knew your mummy." Suddenly he let out a whoop and spun on his heel. "_Molto bene_! Everything is perfect, Rose, everything is just _bloody _perfect!" He leaned on the railing to catch his breath. "Only one thing left to do."

"Got that out of your system, have you?" said Rose, laughing, but her smile died and she leaned forward as she saw the Doctor draw a long sharp-looking implement from the pocket of his robe. "Hey, what's that — Doctor, what are you doing?"

"Don't worry, it's nothing serious, but a new TARDIS needs a cell sample of Time Lord DNA before it will run the way it's supposed to," said the Doctor. He leapt up the the control center and fiddled a moment with the controls; with a _hiss _like the door opening a little metal strip extended itself from the panel. "And there's only one bit of me left which is still Time Lord, with nothing mixed in." Before Rose could stop him, he plunged the instrument into the palm of his right hand and gouged out a sliver of skin. Gritting his teeth, he dropped it onto the metal panel, which retracted immediately into the center of the TARDIS.

"And that's done!" He held up his hand, grinning. A drop of blood rolled down his palm.

Rose went pale. "Right, I'll get a band-aid."

"No need! TARDIS energy field should regen…" He frowned. "Oh. Right. Human. No, don't worry, Rose, I've got a handkerchief." He leaned on the console and reached into his pocket.

As soon as his skin touched the surface of the control panel, a cloud of golden light expanded from his bleeding hand and swirled around his fingers. The Doctor stopped fishing in his bathrobe pocket and stared, wide-eyed, as the cut in his palm sealed and faded, along with the light, into darkness.

Rose was the first to speak.

"Was that —"

"Regeneration energy." The Doctor held his hand up and moved the fingers experimentally. "It must have lain dormant in my cells until the TARDIS charged it up. Well, isn't this hand just full of surprises."

"Does that mean… does that mean you can regenerate?" asked Rose, who was not at all sure how she would feel about that.

"No," said the Doctor. "No, this body is too human for that. I've only got one life. Just one. To spend with you." He stared at his hand in brooding silence for another moment, then stuffed it into the pocket of his robe and bounded back down to Rose. "So — where do you want to go first?"

"What — now? In our pajamas?"

"Why not? Just a quick jaunt, back in time for breakfast. We can fill up the wardrobe then. Blimey, I'll have to add a bedroom, seeing as I sleep so much more these days…" he trailed off, swallowing. "What would you like… bunk beds?"

"Ha!" Rose slung an arm around his shoulders. "You're a funny one, you are."

The Doctor's face spread into a grin.

"Queen it is, then. So where do you want to go?"  
Rose took his arm and pulled him outside into the garden.

"Tell you what," she said, and pointed at the sky. "Let's go that way."


	8. Chapter 8

_Three Years After_

Oh, they had adventures. This universe, they found, was in much the same state as the one they had left behind, at every point in time, and both Rose and the Doctor found themselves much more knowledgeable about such matters than they had ever been before. On a fancy they paid a visit to Satellite 5 (the era of which had still not become the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, much to the Doctor's chagrin), and popped into a certain underground museum in 2012 America to deal with the matter of the ownership of the internet.

There were discrepancies as well, of course. After they returned three months late from their first excursion (the new TARDIS, it seemed, had inherited some of its parent's inaccuracies), the Doctor received the full brunt of Jackie's wrath and a weeping Tony to boot, which, he found, was no easier to deal with now that he was part-human.

"You can't do that to me again, you just _can't_!" Jackie had clutched at Rose's collar. "I thought you'd be staying now, sweetheart, now that you've got him, I thought you'd just _stay_!"

Rose told her mother, in a shaky voice, that they couldn't be expected to just _settle down _when there was a whole new universe to see. The result was a blazing row between her and Jackie, with Pete somewhere in the middle, that ended in tears and much slamming of doors. Rose was so upset during the whole affair that she didn't notice the way the Doctor stood silently in the corner, watching with that old brooding look on his face, the one that meant he was thinking very seriously about the way things were going.

Nothing came of that for a while, though. After that initial incident, the Tyler family came to an agreement. Clothes were moved into the TARDIS, a whole wardrobe of T-shirts and jeans for Rose, and for the Doctor, ties and trousers and that one special overcoat, a used one at a discount price from the Bargain Basement in central London.

"You know what I heard on the news yesterday?" said Rose one day, through the grating in the floor as the Doctor was tinkering with the wiring below her. "These astronomers have found a new planet in some galaxy somewhere. Made of solid diamond, I heard. Fancy paying it a visit?"

"No," said the Doctor emphatically, and that was that.

One day, as fate would inevitably have it, Rose and the Doctor found themselves in one of those situations where they were certain they would die. The exact details of the incident were difficult to discern, but there was an alien, and a man, not a human man, and a gun held to Rose's head. The alien was recently dead. The false man was all-too alive, and one of those men who would have been better off dead.

The Doctor stood, weaponless and at a loss, ten feet away, and it might as well have been another universe.

"I'm sorry it had to end this way," said the man. "I'm so, so sorry. Now, you — alien man… just… just turn around and go, and I'll… I'll…" He tightened his finger on the trigger.

Rose stared at the Doctor and mouthed, _Go_.

The Doctor reached slowly into his coat pocket.

"There was a time," he said, "when I was a different man, when something like this might have gotten me. But I've changed, oh yes, I have changed."

In his hand he held a gun.

"Doctor…" whispered Rose.

"I used to think… I used to think I never would," he said. "But I've lost too much. I've lost _too much _and now it's _my _time to get what I want. You couldn't have picked a worse day," he told the man, "to call me an alien. And for that I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Because it seems I'm a little too human after all." He pointed the gun with an unwavering hand at the man's head. "I don't give second chances, now _drop your gun_."

"You won't save her," whispered the man. "You could never save her."

"No," said the Doctor. "But now I can die with her." And he fired.

The man folded to the ground. In the ringing silence that followed, Rose and the Doctor stared at each other. Then, suddenly transfixed by what he had done, the Doctor dropped the gun as if it had burned him.

"Rose," he said. "Rose…"

She stood up, slowly, never taking her eyes from him.

"Next time," she said, "you shoot me."

"I didn't — I wasn't —"

"Next time, you _shoot _me! Because I'd rather be dead than see you turn into… into whatever the hell _that _was! Is that what being human has done to you, Doctor? Is that what finally turns you into a killer?" She stepped up to him and kicked the gun away. "Because that's what made you different. You said you never would. And you did."

He stared levelly into her eyes. "I'm not losing you again. Whatever I have to do." His voice shook. "I'm not losing anyone ever again."

"If you keep going the way you are, Doctor, _I'm_ going to lose _you_." She brushed past him. "I want to go home."

That was one of the adventures that they never spoke of again, not directly. Like the day many years ago, with the Dalek and the gun in the basement of an underground museum in 2012 America, it left a mark that made the walls of the TARDIS seem to rust before Rose's eyes, as if this new time machine was finally feeling all the blood its parent had experienced at the hands of its master. The Doctor never touched a gun again. He became, again, the man who _never would_.

It was funny; that incident, of all things, was what convinced Rose beyond any remaining doubt that the man in the TARDIS, with the tie and the coat, was the very same Doctor who had left her that day on a cold and windy beach. The same mind, the same consciousness. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

Strange, funny, the things that convinced her.


	9. Chapter 9

_Three Years After_

It was six o'clock on a quiet morning when they returned. Jackie had just gone out in her dressing gown to water the petunias, when quite abruptly the TARDIS (resembling once more a Police box; the chameleon circuit had broken again. The Doctor insisted it was likely due to its genetic relationship to the old TARDIS but Rose was sure he had done it on purpose) materialized on the deck and skidded several feet, knocking over the chairs in its wake.

Jackie leapt back with a scream and dropped the watering can. The TARDIS door flew open and the Doctor stumbled out, shouting frantically at the top of his voice. It took Jackie a moment to distinguish what he was saying, but when she did she only heard one word.

_Ambulance. _

In a trance, Jackie moved inside and dialed 999 on the house line.

When the emergency workers had been dispatched, she left the phone dangling off the hook and ran to the garden to see her own worst nightmare unfolding before her: the Doctor emerging from the TARDIS with Rose hanging limply in his arms.

"Oh my god, Doctor, what's happened —"

"Keep back!" snapped the Doctor. He lay Rose on the grass and tore off her jacket, rolled back the sleeve of her shirt so Jackie could see two tiny puncture wounds at the top of her arm, just beneath her shoulder.

"Are those _bites_? Doctor — _Doctor_, talk to me, is Rose going to be okay?"

"It's a nebulous viper, I didn't see it coming and I wasn't quick enough to stop it…" The Doctor's face was twisted in a snarl of concentration. "All the people there are dead now, I left them, I took the TARDIS and left them to come here."

"She's dying, isn't she? I told you, I knew this would happen! She's dying because of that — that travel machine!"

"Shut up, Jackie, I said _shut up_!" The Doctor let out a cry of frustration. "There isn't enough time! I'll have to do it myself!"

"_I told you though_, didn't I? I told you and you didn't listen and now you've gone and killed her!"

The Doctor didn't respond to this; he had fastened his mouth around the wounds on Rose's arm to suck the venom from the wound, and Jackie, at a loss as to what to do, watched in horrified silence until the ambulance arrived.

Perhaps Jackie's words had been heard, however, because it was not the Doctor that rode in the ambulance with Rose but her mother, and it was Rose's mother who went first into the hospital room when Rose was pronounced stable that evening, a cold and murky evening.

The entire Tyler family — and the Doctor, for he was feeling a bit distanced from them at that moment — stood in the abominably-air-conditioned hallway outside Rose's room, not saying a word to each other. Pete had an arm around Jackie's shoulders, which were still covered by her dressing gown from that morning. But the worst bit, perhaps, was Tony's tear-streaked face. He stood close to the Doctor, who rested one hand on his shoulder but could not bring himself to look at the boy.

The nurse emerged from Rose's room and announced that yes, she was stable, and would they like to see her?

Tony threw off the Doctor's hand at once and streaked through the doors; Jackie and Pete followed more slowly, leaving the Doctor alone in the corridor.

The nurse paused as she passed him.

"Aren't you going to go and see her, sir?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor, with a tight-lipped nod. "Yeah, just in a… I need a minute."

The nurse eyed him sympathetically.

"Now, I know how rough it is to get a scare like that, mister. I had a sister got in a car crash years back. She was in a coma for three days. Worst days of my life, I'll tell you. But if you don't mind me saying — they told me how you knew just what to do for her. Saved her life, you did! You're a hero, you know — I'm sure she'll be grateful to you." With a nod and a smile she slipped away down the hall.

The Doctor slid his hands into his trouser pockets and drew a long, trembling breath, which he released to the silence of the hospital hall.


	10. Chapter 10

Rose emerged slowly from sleep, and for a moment bathed contentedly in the streams of sunlight seeping through the thin white curtains to her right. But before she could move or stretch a horrible crushing ache plummeted down over her limbs, and she groaned in surprise and pain.

There was, at once, a rush of movement to her right and, on a delay, the sound of a curtain being thrust aside to her left. There was a pause. Rose kept her eyes shut, not wanting to provoke her viciously aching body.

Her mum's voice, in a harsh whisper: "No, she's just woken up. No thanks to you, I might add. I've half a mind to kick you out, you know, after what's happened —"

"Mum, leave him alone," said Rose indistinctly. It was more an automatic response than anything; Jackie was speaking in what she recognized as her mum's 'Doctor' voice.

There was another pause overhead, and hand brushed her hair away from her forehead.

"All right, sweetheart, if that's what you want." And to the Doctor: "Five minutes, no more, and I'll be back to check on her." Jackie's presence swept away and a moment later came the sound of a door opening and closing, and silence.

Rose opened her eyes and there was the Doctor standing over her with a grimace on his face, wearing the same tattered suit he had been in the last trip in the TARDIS... the TARDIS!

"What happ... did we save them?" she asked blearily.

The Doctor sucked in a breath and said, "No. No, they died."

"What — all of them?"

The Doctor nodded, and suddenly sat down hard in a chair beside Rose's bed and covered his face with his hands. With an exclamation Rose tried to sit up, but the pain in her limbs drove her down, so she reached out and drew his hands gently away from his face and saw that he had tears on his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he said. His voice, at least, was steady but his gaze burned into Rose in a way she wasn't at all sure she liked. It was a look she had once seen at Canary Wharf. "I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault. I was just too slow. It's not your fault."

"But it is, though. If I'd never taken you —"

"Don't be stupid," said Rose. "Anyway it's not your fault. I can take care of myself, you know." She attempted a smile, but dropped it when he did not respond in kind. "My mum's been talking to you, hasn't she? You shouldn't let her get to you like that..."

The Doctor's voice was firm and quiet. "We need to stop."

"No, you can't... you promised you'd never leave me behind." She knew she was in the right on this one. "You can't."

"Rose — Rose, I mean us. Both of us. Traveling. It's time to stop."

She stared at him, openmouthed, as his meaning dawned on her.

"You mean — we're gonna stop traveling."

"Yeah."

"Both of us."

"Yes."

"And you're — you're going to just, stay here, in boring old England on Planet Earth forever?"

"Yes."

Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Okay."

They stared at each other for a long minute in silence. Then Rose said, "But what about the TARDIS? You'd give up the TARDIS for — for domestic?"

This time, he looked up and gave her one of his slow, bright-eyed smiles. "You are worth more to me than a hundred years in the TARDIS — and believe me, I've had a few. But I can have that sort of life now. That adventure. But maybe..." He drew in a breath. "Maybe we need to stay in one place long enough to have it."

Rose smiled. There was a flower blooming in her heart. She hadn't realized, really, until now just how wonderful that sounded.

"Okay."


	11. Chapter 11

There came a day, soon after Rose returned home from the hospital, that she and the Doctor had to take some things out of the TARDIS. They had decided to keep it there, in the back yard, as a testament to days gone by — and, the Doctor said, in case it was ever really needed, because a time ship was a useful thing to have.

So Rose and the Doctor began removing clothes and kitchen supplies and all those sorts of things from inside the TARDIS, both trying to ignore the triumphant smile on Jackie's face whenever she came into view.

Tony, now eight, had some choice things to say about their decision to lock the TARDIS doors.

"You promised to take me for a ride! To Barcelona and the 51st Century and all those other places! You promised!"

"I know, and I'm_ sorry_, Tony, but —"

"Don't you dare," hissed Jackie from her reading chair in the corner.

The Doctor swallowed and looked back at Tony.

"I'm sorry, I really am. But it's dangerous."

"That never stopped you before. Rose told me!" And Tony, who always reserved the spot next to his own at the dinner table for the Doctor, didn't speak to him for a week.

Soon enough the inevitable day came when the last T-shirt and cardigan and pair of pinstriped trousers was transferred into the mansion, and the TARDIS was empty of anything that had once made it seem like a home. On that day, Rose and the Doctor stood in the console room together in a state of quiet shock.

"Well I suppose that's it then," said Rose.

"Suppose so," said the Doctor.

"What are we going to do all day now?"

"Oh, we'll find something..."

"Tony did get that Wii for Christmas."

"Oh yes. Wii. Always have wanted to try a Wii..."

He trailed off and they lapsed into brooding silence. The console room seemed cold and forlorn without the whirr of its engines, the dull glow of its lights. The Doctor felt for Rose's hand, and she slipped it into his. The TARDIS for the certainty of Rose's safety. She was so, so worth it.

"You know," said Rose after a while, "There's this... well, it's not like I'm suggesting anything, mind —"

"'Course not," said the Doctor.

"—but I saw this flat down in Kensington and —"

"_Kensington_!"

"—and I thought, well, 'isn't that a nice flat.'"

"'Course it is, if it's in Kensington."

"Not that I'm suggesting anything."

"No." The Doctor swallowed and looked about the TARDIS, drawing in every detail hungrily with his eyes. "Mind you, your mum —"

"I know, she's a right terror. I'm sorry." Rose bit her lip, trying to hide a sudden smile. "She petrifies you, doesn't she?"

The Doctor gave a nervous sort of groan.

"There's no Jackie in that flat in Kensington," said Rose unexpectedly.

"Isn't there? I thought all flats came with their own."

She laughed and looked up sideways into his face. It seemed to dawn on them both right then that this was possibly their last moment in the TARDIS, ever — and immediately afterwards came the thought that this was the only place on the grounds of the entire mansion where Jackie never went. And perhaps it was both of those things or something else altogether that drove the Doctor to put his hand up to Rose's cheek, and without much warning short of a brief and burning stare he leaned down and kissed her warmly.

They had kissed before, of course, although not very often — the adventures, the running, the thrill of space and time and each others' company had always seemed more important than the kissing. It wasn't needed to emphasize the friendship between them. But now there was a new urgency in the Doctor's embrace. Rose was enveloped by his arms in a way she hadn't been since that morning on Bad Wolf Bay. It wasn't just losing the TARDIS — it was keeping her. And suddenly, with the console room dark and empty, he was seized by the irrational fear that if he let her go she would drift up and away and disappear, and he would be alone again forever.

And Rose clung to him, because she remembered a day when she hadn't been able to hold on long enough. One warm kiss became a desperate embrace, and when gravity threatened to overcome them they backed up against the console. A new kind of flower blossomed in Rose as she reached up her hands to touch his cheeks, his eyelids, the line of his nose. The Doctor, too, was overcome by the power of this feeling that had broken over him with the sudden strength of a tidal wave. Because Rose smelled like pink-and-yellow girl, and snow, and stardust, and in all his wandering days he had never found a scent so wonderful. What kind of miracle or trick was this? That he had gotten her back? That he had gotten to stay with her?

Her fingers traced the line of his collar and parted the layers of clothing around it — oh yes,he hadn't worn a tie today! — and he shivered at her touch. That movement sent a change over the kiss; lips parted and hesitated, trembling on each other, sharing breath — and then deepened into something that burned with longing and passion and broken boundaries.

Rose stood on her tiptoes and pushed his coat off his shoulders, and it fluttered to the ground like a blanket which they fell upon together. Like molting feathers they peeled away the layers of denim and fabric that still separated them until it was just skin against skin, heart against heart. For the Doctor there was nothing but a pink-and-yellow winter, in the spin of her hair and the hitch in her breath when he kissed her eyelashes. For Rose there was the universe itself, the smell of rushing summer and galaxies, the press of a chest that had been rising and falling almost a thousand years, angular cheeks and broken memories and a millennium of anguish and joy flowing from him to her and — somewhere beneath all of that — cheap QuickMart-brand hair gel, watermelon-scented.

They shared breath and skin and thoughts together, naked and exposed to the air of the darkened console room. First there was cold, and then there was fire; Rose would never have words for how his chest and belly felt pressed against hers, and the Doctor would always, even in years to come, be overwhelmed by the thought of how her skin had shone in the darkness over him. And as they became of a single breath and being, they were both aware of two heartbeats there, two hearts in the TARDIS, beating in time with each other, and they were finally whole again.


	12. Finale

After Tony and James said their goodbyes and went down to the hospital shop for a coffee, there was no sound in the room but the rain on the windowpanes and the muted beeping of the heart monitor.

_Beep_

_Beep_

_Beep_

One heart. One heart for him, one heart for her. She held his hand in hers, stroking the soft wrinkled skin with her thumb.

"What's that?" he whispered, turning his head to look at her. "Don't cry, love. Don't you let me go seeing you cry."

She wiped her face clumsily with her sleeve. "Sorry — I just —"

With a great effort he raised his hand and cupped her cheek. She held it there, against her skin.

"Don't cry, Rose," he whispered. "We had a good run, didn't we? The best of times. And James... little Jamie! I reckon he's got a good run left if he's as good as his old dad." He gave a dry chuckle.

Rose's mouth twitched.

"Was that a smile?"

"Doctor..."

"That was a smile!" His face turned serious in the washed-out hospital light, watching her with an intensity in those ancient brown eyes that had broken gods and watched whole galaxies fade and turn to dust. "I'm so very old," he said. "I'm tired, Rose, I'm so tired. I've lived too long, I've seen too much, and I'm tired. But there's one last thing I want to see. Just one. So, please... give us a smile."

And she did, she smiled for him. A watery smile, but radiant, still young, still so young compared to him.

"I love you," she whispered.

His eyes drifted shut. "Quite right, too," he breathed. She still held his hand to her face and he savored the warmth of her skin, his Rose.

"Don't leave me," said Rose, leaning in. "Please, Doctor, don't leave me."

He opened his eyes halfway and drew her in, her silver hair and liquid eyes that held more starshine in them than all the galaxies he had ever explored. And that smile, the best thing of all, which was struggling to stay on her face. He wanted that smile to be the thing he closed his eyes to, and he wanted her voice to sing him to sleep.

"Don't leave me, Doctor..."

"Never again, Rose Tyler." He beckoned her in close and kissed her softly. "I'll be waiting. Whatever there is where I'm going, I'll be waiting and I won't move until you find me."

She wanted to ask what he did believe, what god he prayed to, if any, because in all their time together she had never thought to wonder. But she bit her lip and pressed her forehead against his and felt the rhythm of his breath with hers in silence.

At last his hand shifted on her cheek.

"Rose Tyler..." he whispered, and drew a difficult breath. "Rose Tyler, oh how I love you, but it's time for me to go."

She had to work to get the words out. "You aren't... going anywhere... without me. You aren't a Time Lord anymore. You're my husband... and I'm... I'm not..."

"Oh, Rose, don't do that. Have... a good life. Finish it... strong. And when... you get tired... I'll be waiting. And we can go... together."

"Do you really believe that?"

"I believe... in you."

She shut her eyes tight at the words, her brow pressed to his, their noses touching, sharing breath and heartbeats. She could feel his thoughts drifting through her forehead, into her skin, thoughts of age and living and loving and death, and, at the very last, a name.

But names didn't matter, really. They had never mattered.

"Together?" she murmured. There was no response. But she thought she caught a thought, a fading thought from his mind to hers, and it told her yes, together, together we will go. But no words and no breath came from his mouth anymore and she was alone with the patter of rain and his cooling skin.

She didn't open her eyes or move away. She was old, too. Old and tired, although perhaps the Doctor hadn't understood just how tired. A grandmother and a great-grandmother, and she could see her own sunset on the horizon, if she closed her eyes long enough.

"I'll finish strong," murmured Rose Tyler. "I'll finish strong, and I'll see you soon."


	13. Intermissionary Note

_Thanks all of you so much for your feedback on the last chapter! I'm ecstatic that so many people are enjoying it. _

_I feel this would be a good time for me to clarify that the Finale is not necessarily the last chapter I will be posting for this fanfiction; it's just the last in the chronological line. I posted it before anything else just because it really needed to be written and a friend requested it be put on the site. Time is wibbly wobbly, right? There are a couple more moments I'd like to chronicle in the lives of Rose and the Doctor, I just need the right moment to write them. Then I'll post them as prequel chapters._

_Thanks again, everyone._

_~Candles_


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